Please Please Please (poetry)

Allow me, at least, to protest the idea that the moment had been planned.
Promiscuity lingered in both our minds, of course,
And we were in my bed long before the crucial instant arrived,
before my fingers left yours to nervously scratch at the hem of your jeans.

But believe me when I say that the breathless shock I felt
When I kissed you for the first time
was genuine.

I never planned to have it happen. But...
...but we both thought of it. I can't deny that.
When your roommate, your stalker, and your proteges,
And my friends, and my brothers, and my former lover,
had left the two of us alone,
and we were faced with no more excuses for our shared procrastination,
I asked if you'd like to see that movie we had both reminisced about.
And you paused.

Perhaps this was the crucial instant.
After thinking one thousand thoughts I'll never know,
When you said yes, and went to your room for booze,
did you hope to find courage at the bottom of the bottle?

The alcohol filled our heads with sand,
and as physical contact sent shock crackling through our minds,
is it any wonder that we were reduced to glass?

The water that had been draining away into the ocean past our feet,
sucking them into the sand and fixing us in place,
had crashed back into us in this one
unexpected wave.
And the water pulled away again,
but now you were nowhere to be found.


You told me later how you had bruised like an apple,
all the while believing you were still wearing
the protective skin of an orange.
But you've never liked metaphors,
and you still scrunch your nose,
and claim not to understand,
how you could be any kind of fruit.